Style Mavens Battle In `Perfect' Setting

Fame Sweet Fame

If you're glued to shelter and style shows, keep your eyes peeled: You might spot a home or person you know.

The CBS show reality show ``Wickedly Perfect,'' which is seeking the next Martha Stewart, is set in a 20,000-square-foot Greenwich mansion (known as ``the estate'' in the show). And three Hartford-area businessmen and brothers are making their small-screen debut on the new TLC show ``Moving Up.''

On the cabinets in the enormous kitchen where Tom Frank prepared that fateful apple and cheddar soup that branded him as disastrously imperfect in the first episode of the new reality series ``Wickedly Perfect,'' six yellow sticky notes hang with hand-printed reminders to call the orthodontist.

On one wall, the Fisher family rules (such as no name-calling, no dismissive gestures) are posted alongside chore charts for the four boys who actually live here with their mother, Alease.

These touches of real reality returned to the opulent Greenwich estate after a production crew pulled out and the 12 contestants who lived here for six weeks, vying for the distinction of being more Martha than Martha Stewart, went home.

The 20,000-square-foot mansion, with its 10 bedrooms, eight or nine bathrooms (the owner has lost count) and 10 acres of rolling grounds, is the jaw-dropping background for the CBS show.

The house is owned by high-end fashion designer Alease Fisher, who purchased it 10 years ago with her then-husband, Andrew, a hedge-fund manager.

Before they moved in, the couple hired Manhattan designer Richard Keith Langham to renovate and redesign the 1850s-vintage farmhouse from the floorboards up. For the next year and a half, Alease flew between Greenwich and London, selecting antiques, art and carpets.

The ``Wickedly Perfect'' producers called last summer seeking to rent the house for six weeks as a location for the TV competition to crown the nation's new authority on style and home living.

Two years ago, Fisher's patio played host to the book-club scene in Paramount's remake of ``The Stepford Wives.'' And her dining room, which can seat 40 comfortably, is a favorite location for fund-raising balls.

``I love this place so much that I open it regularly,'' says Fisher, a youthful, blond fortysomething who rushes to straighten couches and close the armoire to hide the TV as she shows visitors around.

Eric Schotz, president and chief executive officer of LMNO Productions, the independent company that created ``Wickedly Perfect,'' says the Fisher house had all the features he wanted -- a spectacular, historic residence, property with a stream running through it, even a croquet court.

``It looks, tastes and feels what we were looking for,'' Schotz says.

Contestants lived on the home's third floor. The house consists of two long wings that spread to the right and left of the circular center atrium. The third floor is lined with guestrooms and built-in storage units.

Fisher's wing on the second floor was pretty much off-limits. It includes her workroom with clubby plaid carpet and dark wood closets that hold samples of her signature line of cocktail-party wear. There also is a large master bedroom and adjoining gym.

On the other side of the sweeping open stairway on the second floor is the boys' wing. Each son has his own room, and one has a sitting area with a couch and chairs.

The long corridor outside the boys' rooms is covered with a bright mural of scenes from around the grounds. One panel depicts the pool house, with the boys in one corner of the 75-foot-long pool.

Schotz says he was a little worried about moving 12 strangers into such splendid surroundings. But that was before he realized that the people vying to become the next domestic diva were not acting.

``When we got there, they all made their beds,'' he says.

Schotz says the show, which is on Saturdays at 8 p.m., is doing well, but he is not sure if it will be back for a second season.

After striking a deal in which the production company paid an undisclosed fee and agreed to keep Fisher's full-time housekeeper on salary for the duration of the production, Fisher and her sons moved into a vacant house 10 minutes away.

Fisher sought promises from the producers that the show would not ridicule Greenwich or portray the town as spoiled or shallow. She also asked them to film an episode at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich (the fourth episode takes place there), where she serves on the board of directors, and that the neighbors (one of whom is the show's host, Joan Lunden) not be disturbed.

There was only one glitch. Aerial shots of the house were filmed on the night of a total lunar eclipse, when many neighbors were outdoors watching the moon disappear. The hovering chopper, its glaring strobe lighting the night sky, terrified them, conjuring images of terrorists or an escaped convict somewhere in the neighborhood.